Fen, Bog & Swamp

 Annie Proulx, "Fen, Bog & Swamp", Scribner, 2022. pp. 100-101

I learned to read from recognizing the skeleton letters of words as my mother read me bedtime stories.  It fastened my life to books and long years of endless reading.  When I was in second grade I was excited to discover that the school had a library and every chance I got I rushed there to read and read until I was dragged or pushed out to the hatful recess playground.  One day I discovered a startling book, the tan cover showing a rocky bluff and a cave opening.  First published in 1904 it was The Early Cave Men by Katharine Dopp, one of America's early educators.  I looked long and hard at the sophisticated illustrations by Howard V. Brown, later famous for his early sci-fi covers.  I could not get enough of a drawing of two barefoot women clad in ankle-length skin dresses and fighting a bear at close quarters.  One slashed with a stone dagger, the other stabbed the bear with a spear.  Their expressions were intensely fierce.  You can't imagine what that picture meant to an eight-year-old girl who had already noticed that in books women were always pictured holding babies, crouching over a fire or handing food to someone.  Fighting a bear!  The book was wonderful too because it featured a map of the cave people's country.  It was the first map I had seen and it literally shaped the story.  The impression of Paleolithic life that book made on me has lasted a lifetime as I observed how the general population absorbed pronouncements from archaeologists,  historians and artists that emphasized the Eurocentric vision of male-dominated progressive technology.  Thinking of the women and the bear I knew the questions were not all answered.